BA (Hons) Education Studies and English

This module builds on and develops the basic methods and data interpretation skills developed during Level 4 modules. The module also prepares you for your Dissertation at Level 6 especially if you are intending to pursue a Dissertation (Capstone Project) in Education Studies or other Social Science (at Level 6). You will explore ways in which a range of quantitative and qualitative methods can be brought to the investigation of educational issues. You will apply selected quantitative and qualitative methods and will be introduced to the benefits and difficulties of education research. You will develop your understanding of the range of research methodologies and research methods (data collection tools) that can be used in education research, and further develop your skills of statistical analysis and data interpretation.

An understanding of the principles and practice of inclusive education is crucial to those who intend to work in an educational context. This module will introduce you to the philosophical social justice debate and theories and ideologies of inclusive practice, and will examine interpretations of diversity and inclusion in different contexts. Although matters relating to inclusion are embedded in all modules, this offers you the opportunity to study the topic in depth and to critically analyse and apply a range of theories in the context of your work with young people in a range of educational contexts. It will build on the values, beliefs and philosophies explored in Level 4 modules and extend your appreciation of issues of human rights, equality and equity.

This module will introduce you to the generic and thematic diversity of the Victorian period (1837-1901). It considers a range of texts from across the period, from poetic forms to late-Victorian drama. The selection of texts combines some of the most familiar works of Victorian literature with lesser-known and recently neglected writings. It also studies Victorian social, cultural and scientific debates and considers the emergence and significance of a variety of genres, including (but not limited to) the social problem novel, serial fiction, sensation fiction, and comedy. This module emphasises the specific historical, socio-cultural contexts of the Victorian era to reflect on the ways in which Victorian writers negotiated ground-breaking ideas, discoveries, and significant events. It will encourage you to question current preconceptions about the nature of 'Victorianism' and what it represents, and engage with contemporary key Victorian scholarly debates. Teaching will focus on further developing the analytic skills acquired on the degree so far, and applying them in relation to illustrative examples of historicist analysis, debating skills, and nuanced interpretation. In the assessment you will deploy a historically informed approach to issues in context and test sustained research and analytic skills in the form of a written assignment.

Dispelling any notion that this notable branch of literature is simply 'books for kids', 'Literature & Childhood: Grimm Neverlands' examines texts from the eighteenth century right to the present day. During the module we explore a whole range of sub-genres, such as fairy tales, picture books, fantasy and animal stories, as well as poetry for and about children. Literature and Childhood will provide you with knowledge and understanding of cultural contexts, origins of literary form, and constructions and appropriations of 'the child'. Teaching will pay attention to a range of different theoretical approaches that can be used in the study of literature written for children and/or about childhood. The range of issues considered will be supported by directed research and discussion tasks, some of which will be carried out independently. The module develops the conceptual and theoretical foundations laid at level 4.

This module is organised around key frameworks for the understanding of human and cultural identity; likely to include gender, sexuality, nationality, ethnicity, subculture and social class. The exploration of such frameworks is supported by theoretical materials designed to introduce you to key literary and cultural concepts (such as ideology, patriarchy, heteronormativity, performativity, otherness, diaspora, and hybridity). Literary texts will be drawn from a variety of genres, periods, and cultures, and you will be required to identify, and reflect upon, the correlations between identity and its literary and/or aesthetic expression. Through both seminar discussion and the assignment tasks, you will be encouraged to adopt a pluralistic and comparative approach to the topic, crossing textual and discipline boundaries in your exploration of the interlaced operations of cultural classification and individual self-definition.

This module examines the impact of women in literature through a variety of literary forms and transnational parallels and contrasts. It highlights identity politics and the ways in which women have fought to change discriminations based on race, gender, class, age, and sexuality. By bringing together several themes other modules have introduced, this module will strengthen your confidence in undertaking independent research. It will equip you with increased research skills and resourcefulness in choosing your area of specialist literary knowledge by exploring women’s writing by weaving a thread of critical enquiry determined by the significance of women’s contributions to literature. In doing so, it follows a chronologic trajectory, which acknowledges the origins of feminism, and an international perspective that encompasses a variety of diverse authors. It will test your knowledge through coursework that facilitates your choice and independent research skills.

This module offers a survey of the development of western drama from the late 19th century to the present day. You will be introduced to dramatists such as Ibsen, Brecht, Williams and Beckett, alongside key developments and debates in dramaturgical theory and practice. You will be required to think comparatively about theatrical style and ideological expression, relating approaches such as realism, expressionism and absurdism to thematic structures of cultural dissidence, moral subversion and political engagement. Individual plays will be considered as theatrical events as well as written texts so attention will also be paid to the specific theatrical and institutional contexts of individual works, and you will be examine visual and video materials relating to staged performances. Specialist workshop sessions will be scheduled to introduce and enhance the digital literacies required for the practical assessment.

This module offers a selective survey of multicultural British literature considered in the context of empire and its demise, the migration of people to Britain from the colonised and formerly colonised world, the racist nationalism of the decades following WWII, and the more contemporary phenomena of asylum-seeking and terror. We will consider in detail the stylistic and formal properties of a diverse range of texts, from realist novels to performance poetry and visual media.

The module will follow a broadly chronological trajectory, giving you an understanding of the literature in its historical and cultural contexts, tracing shifts in the social and political, as well as literary, landscape of Britain. It will also introduce you to a range of contemporary cultural, postcolonial and feminist theories that will aid textual analysis, as well as connecting to wider artistic and political debates

This module examines literature written for children and young adults. It will engage you with its history and recent successes and transformations and explores its diverse range of genres, such as fairy tales, fables, picture books, poetry, fantasy, and non-fiction. It provides knowledge and understanding of cultural and social contexts, origins of literary form as well as constructions and representations of childhood and youth.

Teaching will pay particular attention to themes, such as suitability and creativity, gender and sexuality, childhood and adolescence, as well as a range of different theoretical approaches that deepens the study of literature written for children and young adults and about childhood and youth.

This module offers you the opportunity to study popular literature as a specific field of literary and cultural production. The course will examine key concepts and theoretical issues relating to the popular, including its definition and relationship to genre writing, and the significance of production and distribution practices.

The module programme will address a sample of illustrative texts drawn from popular literary genres such as action-adventure, travel and life writing, romance, crime, sensation and historical fiction, fantasy, horror, and fan fiction. In addition to analysing the distinctive features of selected popular genres, you will examine the social and cultural contexts informing illustrative texts and evaluate your connections to, and articulations of, relevant cultural issues and debates.

This module will build on (EDU50322) Vision to Reality and introduce you to a further range of contexts and settings for learning, examining these from the perspective of educators and learners, policy and practice. Throughout the module you will be encouraged to consider and appreciate the scope and limitations of education within a variety of teaching and learning environments and organisations. You will be introduced to a wider and more complex range of research and theory related to the benefits and limitations of teaching and learning in informal and alternative learning environments alongside the unique personal embodiment / impact of these on the overall experience of learners and educators. You will consider how pedagogical approaches are utilised in these contexts and how such contexts are positioned in contemporary educational policy. You will develop and apply skills of critical analysis in module sessions and independent learning. First hand experiences of different learning contexts through study visits and work with visiting experts will be threaded through the module as a basis for comparison, analysis, evaluation and reflection.

This module will provide you with skills and knowledge needed to design, conduct and report a substantial dissertation on a subject of interest to you and of relevance in the current context of education. You will gain an understanding of different methodological approaches and perspectives on educational research and be encouraged to articulate your own epistemologies and ontologies. Taught sessions will help to inform and scaffold the your planning process and provide a range of methods for sourcing, collecting, collating and analysing both primary (collected on placement) and/or secondary data in the construction of the written work. The module will ensure that your understanding of research ethics and integrity is embedded at all stages of your dissertation including gaining ethical clearance for primary research. Consideration is given to the potential positive ‘legacy’ of your research in practice. You will build on the research skills imparted earlier in your studies, at all levels, applying them in a more independent manner. The module will deepen and refine your knowledge of your specialist area and offer insights into the construction of longer pieces of analytical written work, and the way in which arguments are mediated in them. Opportunities to share and refine ideas at all stages will be supported by group work and supervisory tutorials. Links with university services offering additional expertise relevant to supporting your research skills and writing will be integrated and signposted in the module.

An awareness of global perspectives on education strengthens Education Studies students’ understanding of educational issues, ideas, and solutions by broadening the scope of study beyond the UK. This module explores the impact of globalisation on education policy and practice in different international settings in varied international, social, economic, and political contexts. The module requires you to take a global perspective on issues and trends such as citizenship, human rights, access to education, and education for sustainable development and relate these to social theories of education and development goals. You will be encouraged to reflect on the global, multicultural nature of our society and your own cultural fluency, and research contrasting perspectives on effective responses to the diversity of international school pupils’ backgrounds, experiences, and needs. You will be required to engage critically with module topics and develop as an independent learner and critical thinker to investigate your chosen area of research.

Excellence and innovation in curricula are a central tenet of any world class education system. This highly responsive module provides you with a theoretical and critical understanding of key considerations in the development and implementation of curriculum policy, content and practice in educational settings. The module considers future developments in the current curriculum and possible alternative future directions. It provides you with an opportunity to study this at first hand in placement settings. A range of theoretical approaches to the curriculum will be critically examined. The syllabus may include topics such as differing views of the nature and organisation of knowledge, and examination of various curriculum frameworks, including aims, content and contemporary views of pedagogy. These will vary over time in order to ensure that the module is responsive to new developments and future directions in education for instance decolonising of the curriculum and environmental education. Innovative practice from inspirational educational settings may be showcased in order to provide models of excellence. Placement will allow you to gain real-world experiences of current curriculum arrangements.

At a time of climate emergency, this module asks how literature reimagines the environment and our relationship to it. You will begin by studying literatures produced in the early stages of the industrial revolution in order to understand some of the causes of our current environmental crisis, including fossil fuel production, major transport networks and other infrastructures, urbanisation, and global food supply chains. Literature not only represents these developments, but also imaginatively responds to the environmental changes that result from them. Poetry and fiction, in particular, call attention to alternative ways of conceiving of and responding to our surroundings, from evoking nostalgia for pastoral lands unaffected by industry to presenting utopian visions of environments for the future. This module will develop your understanding of the range of literary forms that imaginatively respond to environmental change. You will examine elegies that express despair at environmental change, creative essay prose that fosters environmentalist action, and speculative fiction that promotes ecological utopias. Teaching will focus on enhancing knowledge and understanding of key literary texts and environmental debates and issues from the eighteenth century until today. The assignment will ask you to develop critical arguments that bring your understanding of environmental literatures to bear on pressing ecological and environmental questions in the environmental humanities today.

This module offers a final opportunity for you to extend your critical engagement with modern writing through an examination of some of the most significant writers, movements, and innovations in literature since the end of the second world war. Through a variety of genres and literary forms, the module will examine divergent representations and responses to this unsettling period, from disillusioned expressions of national or political decline to progressive visions of renewal through cultural hybridity and reinvention. Central strands of investigation will likely include: challenges to realism and aesthetic experimentation; the rise of apocalyptic imaginaries and the arrival of the Anthropocene; multiculturalism and globalisation; and the deconstruction of self and subjectivity. Lectures and seminars will test and enhance the literary-critical skills acquired at levels 4 & 5 through an engagement with relatively complex literary works, contexts and theoretical frameworks, paying particular attention to the development of independent critical argument in advance of the final assessment. The inclusion of different national literatures within the module acknowledges the significant impact of international exchanges during the period as well as providing a means of investigating the increasingly global contexts and concerns of late 20thand 21stcentury literature.

This module promotes detailed knowledge of the major developments in English Literature occurring during the Romantic period. With its emphasis on the cultural contexts of literary, poetic and dramatic language this module enables you to discuss critically changing modes of expression in relation to political, philosophical, aesthetic and social contexts. It includes some consideration of visual art and print culture, building upon your exposure to other instances of this on other period or genre modules. The teaching pays particular attention to primary resources in terms of social, cultural and literary contexts, by examining texts written in response to idea championed by revolutionaries, reformers and Enlightenment thinkers. In view of the final assessment the module facilitates the building of research context and skills.

This module explores a range of literary and other texts associated with the cultural and artistic developments of Modernism during the early decades of the twentieth-century. It will introduce you to the diverse strands of Modernism, as exemplified by writers such as Joseph Conrad, James Joyce, Ernst Hemingway, Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, W. B. Yeats, Katherine Mansfield, Jean Rhys, and William Faulkner. In addition, it will contextualise these literary achievements amidst the cultural and historical contexts of modernity, examining areas such as colonialism, the artistic avant-garde, modern alienation & the metropolis, gender and sexuality, and the impact of the First World War. Workshops and seminars will pay particular attention to the relationship between cultural transition and aesthetic innovation, further enhancing your close reading skills and historicist methodologies. There will be specific sessions dedicated to the introduction and enhancement of digital literacies to help you prepare for the hypertext assessment.

This module requires you to devise and undertake a dissertation on a subject of interest and to prepare, in written form, a substantial literary critical essay, including a proposal and reference list. It draws on research skills imparted on earlier, research-led modules, but requires you to impart these in a more independent and critically advanced manner. This module will deepen and refine your knowledge of your chosen specialist area and offers insights into the construction of longer pieces of analytical written work and the ways in which arguments are honed across them. The teaching pays particular attention to supporting you in your research and writing processes. This support includes taught whole-group sessions at the beginning, midpoint and end of the module, feedback sessions, and tutorial provision delivered by individual tutors.

This module studies literature from the English medieval period, covering a range of genres and authors. In addition to analysing texts in their original languages and contexts, you will be encouraged to recognise their impact and influence on contemporary literature and media. You will also consider the practical relevance of texts by exploring manuscripts and the ‘margins’ of medieval literature.

The module is designed to develop your knowledge of pre-Early Modern literature obtained at previous levels. Teaching pays special attention to the particular requirements of studying medieval literature. You will be provided with the skills necessary to reading primary sources in their original languages.

The practical form of assessment allows you to explore an area of personal interest from the module while developing your research, oral, and presentation skills.